Archive for April, 2013

I’ve spoken about the HTC One quite a lot lately and wanted to turn to the camera now.

I have been using the HTC One as my main device for around a month. I knocked my iPhone 5 off the top spot and that has now been relegated to being the backup phone that I carry.

As we’ve discussed here in the past, HTC decided not to go the route that many other manufacturers have, and cram in more and more megapixels in to their camera sensors. Instead HTC used a sensor with ‘only’ 4 megapixels, way below almost everything else on the market.

However, HTC have then used a sensor where each individual pixel is considerably larger. Larger pixels mean that each one can capture more light. More light means better pictures. HTC call this an UltraPixel sensor.

O2 today announces the launch of O2 Refresh, the first 24 month tariff to decouple the cost of the phone from the cost of calls, texts and data. O2 Refresh has been designed for customers to get a new phone at any time, without having to pay out their airtime contract. Instead, customers simply pay the remaining balance for their phone and then start afresh.

When a customer signs up to O2 Refresh, they choose a Phone Plan and an Airtime Plan. By signing up to and paying separately for their phone and airtime, customers are given complete transparency, while paying the same overall as they would on a standard 24 month Pay Monthly tariff.

For those customers who want a new handset before the end of their contract term, O2 Refresh enables them to pay off the remainder of their Phone Plan and end their Airtime Plan with no termination fee. To make it even more affordable to get the latest smartphone, customers can trade in their old mobile for cash using O2 Recycle, getting up to £260 to put towards their new phone.

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Industry analysts have been remarking on turn if the tides for the PC industry for quite some time now. Yesterdays market numbers (from two different studies) paint a stark picture revealing why people are making these predictions. The first quarter of this year saw the worst PC sales decline in history, as PC sales dipped down a whopping -14% (as you can see in the chart). Here’s a quote with more of the details:

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Huawei has annouced its big-screened entry-level Ascend G510 smartphone will be on sale with Vodafone UK from April 12. The launch of the Ascend G510 will be attended by a significant ATL marketing campaign, which brings to life the handset’s ‘Outstanding Features’ and will run across print, digital and outdoor media.

Available from Vodafone UK from £13 per month on pay-monthly and £130 on pay as you go, the Ascend G510 combines unmatched functionality, form-factor and firepower in its class to deliver big-screen mobile entertainment for a new generation moving to smartphones and upgrading old technology.

It follows a series of Huawei smartphones combining great features and value in the low-to-mid tier, including the highly-successful and award-winning Ascend G300, a direct predecessor of the Ascend G510 with Vodafone UK.

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The final release date and pricing for the Asus Fonepad has been revealed. The smartphone/tablet hybrid will launch for £179.99 ($275 USD) and will be available for pre-order at retailers like Carphone Warehouse, Amazon and Sainsbury’s April 12. The final ship date will be April 26.

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ZTE has debuted the ZTE GEEK, the first ZTE smartphone powered by Intel’s new 32nm Atom processor Z2580, at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Beijing, China.

The ZTE GEEK has a 5-inch HD screen with resolution of up to 1280×720. It runs on the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OS and has 8GB eMMC+1GBRAM. It also features an 8-megapixel rear camera, 1-megapixel front camera, an LED supplement light, and a 2300mAh large-capacity battery. The phone is powered by the Intel’s new 32nm Atom processor Z2580, which has a CPU frequency of 2.0GHZ. Tests show that compared to Intel’s previous processor, the Clover Trail+ processor is twice as fast for computing and three times as fast for graphics. It also reduces power consumption.

“Our recent collaboration with Intel on the ZTE GEEK builds on the success of the Grand Series and further enhances our competitiveness in the high-end smartphone market,” said ZTE EVP and Head of the Mobile Devices Division, Mr. He Shiyou. “This partnership will also improve customer experiences by providing them with more choices in the market.”

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Google officially announced their new Google Play Store update. The new version 4.0.25 update is designed to be more colourful and easier to use with larger text and a cleaner interface. The new changes work on both phones and tablets providing an easier to use experience. Google is taking a Card-like approach, just like the with Google Now. Here’s a quote with Google’s statement from their blog,

Quote:

Whether you’re in the mood to listen to Justin Timberlake’s new album, read Harlan Coben’s latest bestseller or discover a new game to play, you want the experience of finding and making your purchase to be quick and easy. Today we’ve started rolling out a redesigned Google Play store on Android phones and tablets that is simple, clean and – most importantly – helps you find great entertainment, fast. The new design focuses on bigger images that jump off the page. Similarly themed content is grouped together so you can hone in on a magazine to read or an app to try. As you move down the page, new recommendations continue to appear so there is always more to see and explore. We’ve also simplified purchasing so you can breeze through checkout and get to enjoying your movie rental or other content. The redesigned Google Play store app starts rolling out today for Android phones and tablets running Android 2.2 (Froyo) and above. People around the world should see it over the next few weeks. Get ready for a simpler Google Play.

A little Googleing for the Play apk will allow you to try it out before it’s release.

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EE is doubling the speed and capacity of its 4G network, doubling the average speeds for 4GEE customers to more than 20Mbps and future proofing the network.

Double-speed 4G will roll out to ten existing 4G cities by summer – Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Sheffield. The improvements will be automatically available within existing plans to new and current customers.

EE has set a target of reaching one million 4G customers by the end of 2013, and stated its aim to always offer the fastest network in the UK.

9th April, 2013 – EE, the UK’s most advanced digital communications company, is doubling the speed and capacity of its 4G network. The arrival of double-speed 4G, which enables lab speeds of 130Mbps, will boost headline 4G speeds to 80Mbps plus, and double the average speeds for 4GEE customers to more than 20Mbps.

EE is doubling the amount of 1800MHz spectrum bandwidth dedicated to 4G, from 10MHz to 20MHz. This will give 4GEE customers increased capacity, and access to some of the fastest mobile speeds in the world, reinstating the UK as a leader in mobile and digital communications.

EE is forecasting mobile data traffic to grow by as much as 750% in the next three years alone. Increased speeds and capacity are vital for mobile operators to continue to deliver a consistently high quality experience. EE is committed to always having the fastest network in the UK.

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While there has been plenty of promise surrounding the launch of the new HTC One, the new smartphone’s camera has left quite a few people puzzled.

This is because whereas the typical flagship smartphone on the market today comes complete with a 13 megapixel camera, the HTC One is instead packed with a 4 megapixel camera.

Such a large drop has naturally led to people querying whether they will be missing out if they opt for this device over one of its many rivals. After all, while owners will be able to improve the aesthetic appeal of their new phone by getting their hands on a range of excellent HTC One accessories – Mobile Madhouse already has a great selection on hand to celebrate the new smartphone’s launch, highlighted by its wide variety of quirky cases – there will still be the issue of the standard equipment not quite being up to par.

Symon Whitehorn, a former Kodak executive who is now the director of special projects at HTC, has attempted to quell such arguments in an interview with Computerworld.

He acknowledged: “We think of it as a forward-looking step. It’s allowed us to do a lot more things with the camera than we’d otherwise have been able to do – the first one being the low-light performance, which really is quite special. You get this absolutely natural tone. The camera takes pictures the way you see them, the way you see your moments.”

Mr Whitehorn also stressed that there is a time and a place for cramming lots of megapixels into one device, with larger gadgets usually perfect for utilising this strategy with great results. However, he believes that trying to get more megapixels into a smartphone’s camera while reducing the size of its sensor, as well as the entire size of the device, is having a detrimental effect on the quality of a phone’s photos.

“For 99 percent of what people do with their images, they actually don’t need the high megapixel count. We’d rather give them the sort of performance that is real-world usable,” Mr Whitehorn added to underline that more does not necessarily equal better.

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Samsung Mobile UK has today announced that customers in the UK are now able to buy the Galaxy Note 8.0 from the Samsung Experience Store at Westfield Stratford City with other channels to follow. Ultra portable thanks to its 8″ screen size, the Galaxy Note 8.0 comes pre-loaded with a suite of new content and services worth over £60, at no extra cost to the customer*.

The new mid-size tablet, together with a suite of intuitive features and an evolved S Pen, gives you the ease of using a traditional pen and paper with speed, efficiency and accuracy. Features include a suite of S Note templates and tools that allow you to create, edit, manage and share documents, as well as seamless multi-tasking thanks to Quick Command, continuous text input and Multi-Window View which means the portable 8″ screen can be split and used to access a number of live applications at the same time.

A range of S-Pen apps, including Paper Artist and Photo Note, mean you can be creative wherever you are, whether on the commute to work, on holiday or sat on your living room sofa. The new Reading Mode makes it easier to read e-books, magazines and newspapers as you can optimise the settings to create the most comfortable reading experience, plus you can annotate, highlight, cut and paste text.